- First she drew attention in Africa for bluntly declaring that slavery remained widespread, and then Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean visited a dungeon with a dark past to illustrate her point Friday.
Jean's statement about the plight of children in Seneg

France, with $781 billion in total claims. Should Greece topple the PIIGS dominoes, France will implode. And this is precisely what CDS traders are betting on now, taking advantage of absurdly tight France CDS levels.

This decline after the August peak should be far more serious and we believe it will be the start of a major market rout continuing into the middle of 2011, at a minimum. The deflationary recession that will accompany this market collapse...

China's stunning economic rise is one of the biggest stories of this generation. In just three decades since beginning to embrace market economics, China has left its desperate poverty behind to become the world's top exporting nation. The transform

Railway porter-turned-billionaire financier George Soros delivered a stark warning last night that the financial world is on the wrong track and that we may be hurtling towards an even bigger boom and bust than in the credit crisis. The man who ‘brok

No, not just Greece - all of Europe. Without Congressional authorization or notice, of course. That nice little vertical line is a gain of $421.8 billion dollars of outstanding loans and leases in one week's time.

IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn said public debt in the advanced economies is set to increase significantly and reversing the rise would be a "tremendous" challenge. [Oh dear, perhaps we should raise taxes?]

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc told a U.S. bankruptcy judge that Barclays Plc should be forced to return certain assets it received in its 2008 acquisition of Lehman's core U.S. brokerage, because Barclays arranged a secret $5 billion discount.

Greece's deficit spending as a percentage of GDP (~12.5% this year) looks a lot like ours, which is right around 11% at present. Is anyone in Washington DC paying attention to what's happening over there?

Bjoernsdottir is not alone in planning to leave Iceland's economic mess behind and seek a new future abroad. Most people in Reykjavik have someone in their surroundings who has already packed their bags and left.

Anna Margret Bjoernsdottir never thought she would be forced to leave her once wealthy homeland. But taking out a loan in a foreign currency was a disastrous decision. After 18 months of economic upheaval she has decided to join the biggest emigrat

Oh no, we better not talk about the black hole opening up on bank balance sheets (again)..... that might be a problem eh? Just remember that right up until Lehman blew up the market, while it had its ups and downs, didn't react "too badly" either.

Sovereign debt is already (or is set to rise) above such a tipping point in the US, the UK and the eurozone. It is already more than twice that level in Japan. This means rich countries will lack a dynamic core to help them grow their way out...

The network would eventually carry passengers from London to Beijing and then to Singapore. It would also run to India and Pakistan, according to Wang Mengshu, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a senior consultant on China's domes

However you dress it, the Greek package agreed by EU leaders is a capitulation to German-Dutch demands. There will be no European debt union as long as Angela Merkel remains Iron Chancellor of Germany.
The Frankfurter Allgemeine summed up the deal

- "the EU is in dire position", on the precipice of shattering into default and civil unrest;
- the sovereign debt crisis materializing across Europe will soon reach US shores;
- the CFTC will curtail currency speculation by slashing leverage...

The People's Party, the largest group in a five-party coalition, walked out amid disputes over how to cope with the country's severe problems.
Unemployment has now hit 20 per cent and the economy contracted by 18 per cent last year.
The People's

This economic contagion will be both converted into financial contagion through the banking system and transmitted as both financial and economic contagion to the wealthier western countries that have large economic claims on Latvia and do trade...